A Spoonful of Sugar
by mbovett
Summary: Marlene Kohler prides herself on being able to find the perfect gift for everyone she knows - except for a certain troublesome Norwegian girl. Nyo!Nordics Nyo!DenNor DenNor Regular Nordics


Marlene Kohler loved the snow. She loved the way it fell, fragile and fast, piling up against her window like the thick fur of a winter hare. She liked to sit under a pile of heavy blankets on her sofa - like she was then - listening to muffled squeals of children playing in the street outside and to go out in it herself, letting the cold kiss her rosy cheeks and powder her hair like sugar. The snow brought her Christmas a few steps closer to perfection.

Christmas had already been and gone, perhaps a day ago, perhaps more. Marlene lost all sense of time in that last week of the year. The days turned softly like the pages of an old book; merry yellow and scented with home. No attention was paid to the time. All she did was sleep late into the morning, eat huge roasted meals and drink mulled wine (and other alcohols) with good friends and family, and sleep some more. Each moment was filled with drowsy content and there was no need for timekeeping. It was a snug end to a year of hard work and a month of ceaseless festive preparation, including the long task of finding the perfect gifts for everyone she knew.

She stretched like a cat on the sofa, wiggling her toes in the heat of the log fire at the far wall as they poked out from the end of her blanket. The woolly socks and fleecy bed throw she was wrapped in were both gifts from her oldest and dearest friend, Annaliese Oxenstierna.

Anna would be in her downtown apartment now, probably huddled in her own blankets with her fiancée Tina and watching the old Christmas films from the '90s that they'd grown up with. They would be moving away shortly into the New Year, off to one of the most northerly towns in Sweden in time to get married and properly start their life together. The town was fairly close to the border with Finland, Tina's home country, and though Marlene lamented that she wouldn't see them as often, she was glad that they had each other. Almost as a joke, she had bought Anna a thick, wool-lined winter coat to keep her warm in the far north (Anna was the sort of person who never felt the cold, even if she were to strip naked and swim in an ice-covered fjord). Tina had received a set of canvases and acrylics with which to paint their new town, for she was by far the most artistically inclined person Marlene knew. She worked as a freelance designer for big-brand interior design companies, creating new patterns to go on their products.

In her room, Marlene had pegged Polaroids of the three of them to a string of fairy lights on the wall behind her bed. In the New Year, perhaps, time would slow down enough for her to linger in some sense of grief. But not just yet.

The only other people she had bought presents for were her other friends, her brother, and her brother's boyfriend and his family. Her drinking buddies - Julchen Beilschmidt and Adalie La Vergne - had received a bottle of wine each, and her work colleagues all had baskets of chocolates and hand-crafted items from one of the city's popular Christmas markets. To her older brother, Mathias Kohler, she had given a large replica of a Viking-age axe, with which he vowed to challenge anyone who dared flirt with his beloved Lukas to a non-optional trial by combat. Lukas himself had received an outrageously expensive jar of coffee beans grown somewhere in the United States (he was an ardent lover of all kinds of strange, foreign things, for reasons which Marlene could not quite understand) and his half-brother Emil had received a box set of Marvel films and several boxes of liquorice, plus a miniature scarf for his puffin which Marlene had knitted herself. Their sister, Lilja, was another of Marlene's good friends - she'd been given a leather arm-guard to use in her archery lessons.

The only problem was Lovise.

Marlene was at a loss with Lovise, her classmate and so good a friend to Lilja that she constantly encouraged the poor girl to call her 'big sister'. She was reserved and mysterious to most and hilariously snarky and sarcastic to others, and beyond that she was selfless, kind-hearted, generous, attractive...

Even alone in her home, Marlene found a hot blush covering her face and neck. She blushed far too easily, she decided.

After about two weeks of trying to buy something for Lovise, Marlene had given up, getting into a frustrated huff and declaring to nobody in particular that Lovise was impossible to shop for. If there was a book being released around the holiday season, Lovise bought it before anyone else even knew it had hit the shelves. If there were clothes she liked, she had them. If there was jewellery she liked, she had it. By some miracle, Lovise happened to be good enough with her money to buy whatever she wished for herself _and_ be the most charitable person Marlene knew at the same time. Beyond books, clothes, and accessories, Marlene didn't trust herself to be able to pick out anything that her secretive friend wouldn't find boring or distasteful, and if there was one person she had to get Christmas absolutely perfect for, it was Lovise.

So, instead, she settled on something home-made. She had begun by going through a list of the things they both enjoyed - batches of Danish vanilla cookies, photo albums, hand-knitted Christmas decorations, and other small trinkets like them. In the end, Marlene had settled on (and successfully baked) a batch of cookies to present to Lovise in a tidy little basket decorated with red ribbon and miniature bells, but in a wine-induced stroke of poor judgement after an evening out at a bar with some work friends a few days before Christmas, she had eaten the entire batch herself in the span of half an hour and promptly vomited the next morning.

Maybe that made the predicament her own fault, but Marlene was a Kohler, and the Kohlers were rarely inclined to take responsibility for their actions unless some hideous atrocity had been committed that had to be righted at all costs. Such an event had occurred only five times in her memory - three times with herself, once with their mother, and once with Mathias. They were indeed a stubborn family.

And so it was that Christmas Day had come along, and Marlene had attended Christmas lunch with Mathias, Lukas, Emil, Lilja, Anna, Tina, and Berwald (the final name belonging to the cousin of Anna and close friend of Mathias and Lukas, for whom Marlene had bought an _extremely_ last-minute IKEA gift coupon). Neither Berwald's boyfriend Tino nor Lovise herself had joined them, for each had gone back to their hometowns to spend the season with their immediate families.

Lovise's absence had not eased Marlene's mind in the slightest. Fully aware that she would irreversibly shame herself in the process, Marlene had caved and begged her brother for ideas. In some ways, he had helped, and in ways more typical of him, he had most certainly not.

His chief ideas all pointed directly at a secret which Marlene hoped was known only by him and Anna (though she had no doubt that Mathias had caved and gushed everything to Lukas at one point or another) - that Marlene was, for all intents and purposes, entirely smitten with a certain Lovise Pennelik. Each and every suggestion would have been more at home in connection with Valentine's Day. He had listed out poems, songs, mixtapes, romantic dances, and every other honey-sweet thing under the sky. He had told her to serenade and to recite, to paint and to _woo_. All of which were somewhat useless suggestions in wake of the fact that Marlene's entire system ceased to function in Lovise's presence.

It was as each every part of her was sharpened when Lovise entered the room. At the best of times she knew that she could be troublesome and impulsive, but her boundless, reckless energy seemed to swell in those moments. She became as dopey as a kitten on catnip and attention-seeking as a newborn puppy.

In summary, when it came down to actually trying to look somewhat impressive and attractive around her, all efforts were futile and meaningless.

She rolled over so that she was lying on her side, facing the TV stood on a cabinet against the opposing wall. Said cabinet contained within it shelves for storing bottles of wine - all of which had been drained over the past week or two. Drinking wasn't going to solve anything for her. 'Mary Poppins' was being aired on TV and she had been listening half-attentively, trying to come up with a last-minute idea the whole time. When she was alone, sober, and unable to sleep, that was all she could think of.

Lovise should have something meaningful. Lovise should have something beautiful. Lovise should have something from the heart.

Lovise... was on her doorstep.

The sound of the doorbell ringing jolted her from her near-sleeping state and she sat upright so abruptly that all of the blankets she had engulfed herself in fell away to the floor. Her heart began to thunder.

Quicker than she could think, she hurled herself off of the sofa, almost crashing into the cabinet in the process, and skidded out into the hallway, clumsily trying to force her feet into slippers as she hopped towards the door. She walked straight into it in her confusion, the door handle jabbing her hip and making her groan out at the pain that began to throb there.

It had to be Lovise. She had promised she would visit everyone when she came home, and she'd had plenty of time to travel back to Copenhagen.

She fumbled with the key. How should she behave? How to explain the gift conundrum? Gods above, what if Lovise had gotten her something expensive, or worse, something made entirely by hand? Freya help her, she would look more of a fool than normal, and Lovise would be so disappointed and-

"Hello, Marlene. Merry Christmas."

Freya and Odin and all her Gods help her, she hadn't even noticed that she'd opened the door. How long had she been stood there for, staring past Lovise's shoulder with the expression of a perplexed fish? If Mathias were around, he would take her aside and slap some sense back into her.

She righted herself. Continuing to gawp would help nobody.

"Hey Lo! Happy Christmas!"

She stepped aside, letting the smaller girl in. Lovise was crafted with the delicateness of a china doll and the pointed edges of a russet fox. She was shorter and lighter and had long, rippling hair that fell to her waist, sometimes braided and sometimes curled. This evening it was curled, and Marlene could not remember the last time that she looked so beautiful.

She also didn't fail to notice the large bag that Lovise had brought in with her, and the flash of holly-patterned wrapping paper inside. Her smile wavered for a moment.

Lovise walked ahead of her into the living room and set herself down in the arm chair next to the sofa, putting the bag down on the floor beside her next to her boots. Marlene swore that the corners of her mouth tugged up as she looked over at the merry musical on TV, and almost on instinct she leaned over to the remote control and turned the volume up. Then, for just a few moments, she allowed herself to stand and admire her. She had not put any make-up on, though she looked fiercely handsome when she did. The silver ring on her right hand was new and the soft coils in her hair were limper than usual - she had not done much to dress up before she came over. Even so, she did not look tired. Only peaceful.

"Anything to drink, darling?" she inquired, grinning widely and putting her hands on her hips. "I got hot cocoa, tea, prosecco, juice boxes, coffee..."

"A festive selection," Lovise remarked, "but I wouldn't say no to some coffee."

Marlene bowed, strode out of the door to the kitchen across the hall, and proceeded to violently scold herself for bowing.

"I came to see you first," Lovise called over the noise of the film. "I thought we could invite some others round tomorrow, if you don't mind me crashing down here tonight. I'd love to have lunch with Lilja and to have another Christmas with Anna and Tina before they go away next year. I don't have to stay the night if you don't want me to. It just might be easier for tomorrow if-"

"Stay!" Marlene blurted out, leaving the kettle to boil and half-skipping back to the living room. "I have pyjamas and stuff you can use, and you can borrow some blankets and a hot water bottle and whatever other stuff you need. Plenty of people have gotten me cosy things this year, it's been awesome."

This time, Lovise really did smile. "Then I think you'll like what I have for you."

Marlene's breath hitched as Lovise reached down into the bag and carefully plucked not one, but _two_ things from within it, one large and soft and one small enough to sit in the palm of her hand. Her mind bullied itself for not being able to say anything.

"Here," Lovise said firmly, holding the gifts out to her, "have them now, whilst the water boils. I hope you do like them, I'm going to look rather stupid if you don't."

Marlene could only offer a numb smile as she took them and sat on the edge of the sofa.

Her knee began to jog as she opened the smallest gift first. A bow was tied around it in brown string and she took care with unpicking it and setting it safely aside, so that she might make use of it again in the future. Anna had forced a habit of saving ribbons and paper onto her when they were younger.

The paper came carefully undone, and she was left with a wooden box sealed by a golden buckle. An illustration of the night sky was carved into the lid and her fingers came close to trembling as she unclasped it and peered into its contents. Her mouth fell open a little when she did. Cushioned by a lining of red velvet was a pair of silver swan earrings, small and bright as snowflakes. She could vaguely remember them seeing them in a shop window way back in the summer, when she was out shopping with Lovise and Lilja.

How had Lovise managed to remember that?

She didn't try to stop the enormous grin that spread over her face as she gently prized them from the box and made a dash for the mirror in the hallway to put them in. A minute later she returned, and felt as though she could have started dancing with joy in the middle of the room.

"Oh my gods! They're gorgeous!" she squealed, restraining herself from lunching at Lovise and hugging her. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you-"

"Sit down," Lovise chided. "You still have another."

She smiled at Marlene's antics anyways.

All guilty nerves and fears momentarily forgotten, Marlene jumped back down onto the sofa and picked apart the silver ribbon of and unwrapped the other present, a little more carelessly than before so that the paper shredded in places. This time she was greeted by folds of soft red, and when she unfolded it and held it up in front of her, she could see that it was a bright crimson dressing-gown with a white lining. Turning it around, she laughed aloud at the writing embroidered in silver on the back.

 **'I can't adult this morning, and the rest of the day doesn't look good either.'**

"Gods, Lo, these are perfect," Marlene said, half-lost in admiration of the robe and the carved jewellery box. She didn't need to turn around to know that Lovise was smiling. "Thank you."

And then the guilty tug returned.

Her smile dropped, and she folded the dressing gown back up again, setting down on the end of the sofa. Lovise's face fell in the same moment.

"Marley? What is it?"

For a moment, Marlene's mind overloaded with things to say, sorry excuses for her failure and pitiful pleas for forgiveness and hopeless ideas of how to right the situation. She would not - _could_ not - speak, nor meet her friend's eyes, and all the while she was completely rooted to the spot and incapable of reacting to Lovise's concerned expression, even if she had wanted to, which she most certainly would if she could actually see her friend's face.

Lovise's knuckles whitened as she gripped the arms of the chair and sat up a little straighter.

"Did I do something wrong?" she asked, her voice becoming a little higher and strained. "You don't have to say you like them if you don't. I can return them and give you the money instead so you can buy something you like. The earrings might take a while though, the shop is closed until a couple weeks into January. And I'm sorry the dressing gown is a bit cheesy, but I thought it matched your sense of humour, and if it doesn't it can be replaced with something better-"

"I love you."

 _'A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, the medicine go down, the medicine go down...'_

Only the TV kept going, the songs playing like clockwork as both girls dropped into silence.

Marlene couldn't move. She couldn't do anything but stare at the window behind the sofa, at the snow fluttering against the window. Her expression in the frosted glass was one of pale shock. She had chosen Mathias' simplest idea in a fit of pure panic. Now those words were hung in the air between them, waiting for somebody to snatch them down and make something out of them.

"Do you mean that?" Lovise asked, barely more than whispering. "Do you mean that?"

A heartbeat's pause. "Would you like me to?"

"More than anything."

"Yes. Yes, I mean it."

Nothing happened.

Nothing until Lovise rose from her chair in graceful silence and took two steps across to where Marlene stood turned towards the window, cupped her face in her slender hands, and leaned up to kiss her.

A hand smoothed her curls and warm lips smiled against her own, tasting of too-sweet lipstick and boiled sweets and the last of the winter wine. They drowned themselves in it, in a moment that felt like the long drip of syrup and the brightest embers in the fireplace, and at some point their hands found and knotted in each other. Every touch was like a brushing of eggshells, soft and tentative, quiet and tender.

Each thing that needed to be said was done without words. _I love you_ and _I need you_ and _I want you_ , _I'll hold you for forever_ and _I never want to let you out of my arms_. A year of love bottled up like liquid moonlight, shining and soothing, emptying its contents into a pair of matching hearts.

No words existed afterwards. None needed to. The boiling kettle was forgotten; there was only the closeness of their bodies, and the snow tumbling outside, and the milky voice of Mary Poppins playing on the television behind them. The promise of something new and precious, being started in a most attentive of ways, like seeds being blown from a summer dandelion. A gift worth more than a thousand presents.

 _'_ _Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down  
In a most delightful way.'_


End file.
